02-Jun-2001
Author: Dan
Title: Gravel
Archive: GWA
Timeline: After series
Warnings: relationship break-up and all that
Pairings: you take a wild guess ;p
Disclaimer: I do not own GW, it belongs to whoever it
belongs to and I don't mean any harm or insult in
using their creations. The song is by Ani Defranco off
'Living in Clip'. She is _such_ a goddess.
[i heard the sound of your bike,
as your wheels hit the gravel,
then your engine in the driveway
cutting off
and i pushed through the screen door
and i stood out on the porch
thinking fight, fight, fight
at all costs]
I watch as Duo pulls into my driveway; a strange, soft sort of neutrality settles over me, a type of harsh chill in my stomach that makes me sick. The thin mesh of the screen door makes the world seem slightly hazy. The sweat that slips down my back in distinct droplets makes my tank top stick uncomfortably to my shoulders. It tires me, this game we play; makes my eyes hot and itchy. He always comes when the colony's climate control technicians decide to get cute and try to imitate the sweet heat of Earth's summers; instead, they just turn my steel and concrete cage into an oven that bakes the bitterness into me. The heat makes the road waver like water. It seems like he's riding on an asphalt escalator, gliding towards me. I don't want to see him, and that knowledge settles over me like the heavy lead vests they make you wear when you go in for x-rays. I'm too familiar with this weight, those vests.
He stops at the steps of the porch and looks up at me through the haze of screen door. My face is blank, his eyes are tight, and the tension creeps over my skin like spiders' legs. I open up the door and step through, a thousand things that ought to be said dying on my lips. I sigh, frustrated beyond expression.
"It's been a while," he says. He's not apologetic, just stating a fact.
"You've been busy," I say, but my voice isn't snide.
[but instead i let you in,
just like i've always done
and i sat you down and offered you a beer
i fired several rounds,
but you were still sitting there
when the smoke cleared.
and you came crawling back
to say you wanna
make good in the end.]
We stare at each other across the kitchen table, and the light knows not to play between us. The kitchen fan makes his bangs flutter at random moments. I'm suddenly resentful of his presence, his disruption. He always throws the order of my life to pieces, and--dammit--I like my organized routine. His eyes shift from mine, like he can sense my sudden hostility even though I haven't even moved. He twists his long-fingered hands around the neck of his beer bottle absently.
"So?" I prod him. It's a first. Normally he's the one prodding at me--making me rearrange the structure of his life to make room for him.
"So..." He gives me that disarming grin that he gave me when we first met all those years ago. So much has changed. Sometimes I mourn my shattered convictions, mostly I don't. Today his grin does not move me.
"It's been six months," I say in a flat tone. I hadn't expected him back this time.
"I don't want bad feelings between us," he says suddenly.
"Little too late for that," I reply. Bad feelings and a general feeling of regret are the bedrock of our relationship.
"Then let me make it right."
"It's never been right between us."
[and oh, oh,
let me count the ways
that i abhor you,
and you were never a good lay
and you were never a good friend
but, oh, oh what else can i say
i adore you]
I study the contours of his face with a cool eye. I've never been able to be objective around him before all of this. He'd come bounding into my life with this intensity, this type of tangibility. I wanted to touch before the warning bells in my head could go off and say 'eno, dangerous,'--by then it was already too late. Like the light of a flame dancing before you, he makes you want to touch him. They don't mean to burn you to the ground; they just do.
Funny, I can only pull myself together when everything else is falling apart.
His face is full of angles that should be harsh, and somehow aren't. Those quick eyes still seem to take up more of his face than they deserve. They seem so sincere, so open, even though he's never once let me see the things he keeps so close to his chest.
I can remember with painful clarity the way his eyes chilled the first time we'd had sex and I reached out to cuddle him close. I remember, now, that they always stay open when we kiss.
His hands are never still, always fidgeting uselessly with something. He can never be still, never take the time to find the right thing to say. I feel with a sharp remorse his neglect of all the little things that bind people together. And I wonder why I fell for him in the first place. The tilt of his head, or the maybe the sun in his hair, made me look at him different. But in the flat, dead light of the colony all those things are missing, and all I can think is that he's never been a friend to me. And you know, I just can't see the point to this any more.
"Enough," I say for the first time--in the middle of his sentence. He's always talking, but he never says the words that I need him to say. "It's enough."
And in the silence I can hear something snap. Maybe it's something inside of me.
[all i need is my leather,
one t-shirt and two socks,
i'll keep my hands warm
in your pockets, you can use the engine block
and we'll ride out to california
with my arms around your chest,
and i'll pretend this is real
'cuz this is what i like best.]
"I've had enough," I say. The suddenness of the words gives them more power.
"Enough?" Either it's the novelty of me speaking back to him, or maybe the enormity of the situation is pressing on him too, but he finally shuts up long enough to let me talk. He might even be listening, too.
"You come, you go, you never stay." I hold up a hand to stop the objection that I can sense rising within him. "Yeah, I know you aren't the staying type--but, you know, I might be, or I might not. Hell, I don't know. I can't be sure what I am because with you around I can't see where your expectations end and I begin. You're so damned sure of what' right, of what you need, and how it should be that I can't find myself any more. I feel myself dwindling in front of you."
I stand up and take three paces through the room so I can see the curve of the colony rising up like a memory before me. It makes me feel like everything is pressing down onto me--the way his presence makes me suddenly claustrophobic. "I want out."
"Out?"
"Out from under you. From pretending that this is something real. I'm not even the one you're thinking of when you fuck me. I don't know what I am to you, but it's not enough for me." I shake my head as if to clear it, or to deny whatever objection he might make. "I want out."
I look at him, and he seems less stunned than he should be. But I never seem to do anything that really shocks him anyway. Even in the war, when I nearly killed myself rescuing him, he acted like he'd seen it all before. Like he'd already wasted the emotions.
"I want out from under you:" even to me it sounds final.
[and you've been juggling two women
like a stupid circus clown
telling us both we are the one
and maybe you can keep me from ever being happy
but you're not going to stop me from having fun.
so let's go before i change my mind
i'll leave the luggage of all your lives behind
'cuz i am bigger than everything that came before]
"Do you know?"
"About you two?"
"Yeah." He might be ashamed, but I can't find it in me to care.
"I'm blind, Duo, but I'm not that blind."
"I didn't mean--"
"Ja, that's the problem, you never mean anything. But I don't care, not any more."
I take a breath, and it's like I'm surfacing from murky water for the first time. I can see him with such sharp detail that it makes him seem fragile.
"I don't care, and I don't need to know because you are not part of me anymore. I've spent enough time being bored, tired, and dried out waiting for you to remember to come to me. Whatever it is between you two, I hope it's enough for you, because you're not getting anything else from me." From me to him, this is a fucking monologue. I look away, out at the concrete and glass of the colony, uncomfortable to be talking back to him for this long.
The light finally finds his hair with an errant beam, and I remember that he's the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. I want to hold out my hand and say 'forget it, come here' but I know I can't. He may still be beautiful, but that's not enough for me.
[and you were never very kind
and you let me way down every time
but oh, oh, oh what can i say...
i adore you]
I don't wait for him to make the million excuses that might change my mind, and make me wait attendance on him. I leave him sitting at the kitchen table, carefully blank. I pick up the military-looking duffel bag that seems like a memory of what I'd been before he happened to me. I look at the little house in the middle of the colony that's been my cage for way too long. Yeah, I may still love him--but love never conquered all for me.
[i heard the sound of your bike,
as your wheels hit the gravel,
then your engine in the driveway
cutting off]
The End
(:./dan/gravel)
